Bill Gates Hates Me

Whenever a Microsoft product drives me crazy (which is quite often), I just repeat to myself “Bill Gates hates me, and he doesn’t want me to be happy.” It doesn’t make the problem go away, but it helps me put the issue into perspective and makes me feel better. Lots of things drive me crazy in Word (PowerPoint is just always annoying), but the one thing that comes up the most is the tendency for non-designers to embed any and all art in Word.

For non-designers, being able to embed art in Word is a wonderful thing. Suddenly everyone is an artist, and writers can go to great lengths to make their documents look “beautiful” with all sorts of pretty pictures, fun colors, and lots and lots (and lots) of different fonts. For designers, this is just a nightmare. And art embedded in a Microsoft document is useless. Beyond useless. When you import into a page-layout file from Word, the art comes in with the text and is now embedded into your layout. And if you leave it that way, your document’s size will bloat faster than my waistline after Thanksgiving dinner. Linking to the art (which also allows you to easily revise or retouch it if needed) is a much better alternative. Unfortunately, most writers don’t seem to understand that art can exist in the wild, all on its own, outside of a Microsoft doc. Luckily, getting art out of a .docx file is pretty easy. (And, yes, I have been known to convert .doc files to .docx to use this handy trick.) And it even works for .pptx and .xlsx documents.

First, duplicate the file (so you don’t mess up the original). Then change the .docx to .zip. (Not sure why, but .docx files are secretly compressed and just waiting to be let loose.) Your computer will then kindly ask you if you really want to change the extension—which, of course, you do. Then unZip your new .zip document. (On a Mac all you should need to do is double click on it—it is a bit more complicated on a PC, because Bill Gates hates you.) You will now have a folder that you can open. There is a lot of garbage in there that you don’t need. The folder you are looking for is the one labeled “word.” Open that folder, and look for another folder named “media.” Voilà. That is where all the art that was embedded in the original document resides. Unfortunately, the original file names are gone, but that is a small price to pay for having all the artwork magically at your fingertips. Now you can retouch, revise, and noodle the art to your heart’s content, and then link to it in your page layout program. No more file bloat.

I love this trick and I use it a lot. And when I do, I think of my dear friend Maria who first told me about it, because, unlike Bill Gates, Maria wanted me to be happy.